Three companies walked the same roof. Three companies measured the same 2,200 square feet of 1963 Bellevue rambler, original wood shakes curling at the edges after decades of Puget Sound weather. Three companies wrote down a number. The highest sits about forty percent above the lowest, and all three slip the words lifetime warranty somewhere onto page two. That spread is not a typo, and it is not somebody trying to fleece a couple who have owned the house since 1988. Owners sorting through the roofing companies Bellevue WA has to offer are often buying their first roof in thirty-odd years, with no vocabulary for shake grades, coverage limits or workmanship, so the number at the bottom becomes the only thing that looks comparable. The fix is unglamorous. Read every cedar quote’s warranty in two separate halves, the mill’s material warranty and the installer’s own craftsmanship warranty, and most of that forty percent stops being a mystery.
Material Warranties Are Not Workmanship Warranties
A cedar warranty is usually two documents wearing one word. The mill warrants the wood, meaning defects in the shakes themselves on the grade it named, and that coverage is typically prorated so the payout shrinks every year the roof is up there. Tear-off and reinstallation labor is often excluded, which is the part homeowners find out about later. The installer warrants the work instead: flashing, fastening, exposure, ventilation, the details that decide whether good wood ever gets its chance. Terms vary by company and by state, so the only honest instruction is to ask for both documents in writing and read what each one excludes. Plenty of Eastside contractors publish a craftsmanship term of ten years, which at least gives you something specific to compare against a bid that says nothing at all.
On cedar, that second document carries more weight than it does on asphalt, because labor and detail work are the bulk of the bill. Job after job, the thing that fails first is not the shake. It is a valley someone rushed, a course laid a half inch long to stretch a bundle, a vent nobody integrated. Cedar is honest that way, and it tells on a bad install slowly, usually somewhere around winter four.
Cedar Quotes Diverge On Details Nobody Names
Push the three bidders on what they included and the gaps surface quickly. One is pricing a premium grade shake, another a thinner, cheaper cut that weathers faster in this climate. One assumes the existing skip sheathing is sound, while another has budgeted to replace a third of it, because nobody knows what sits under a sixty-year-old roof until the tear-off. One included interlayment, which is just the strip of felt woven between each course of shakes so water that sneaks under one shake meets paper instead of your deck. One priced stainless steel fasteners and one priced galvanized. Say the low bid on that rambler lands at $38,000 and the high one at $53,000; a fair share of that $15,000 gap is scope the homeowner was never shown in plain words, not profit.
Ask These Questions Before You Sign
None of this requires learning the trade. It requires making each bidder write down what they are actually selling, in language that lines up side by side. Send the same four questions to all three and read the answers in a row.
- Which shake grade, cut and thickness are you bidding, and will that appear on the contract? A good answer names the grade and the dimension, not just the word cedar.
- What does your own workmanship warranty cover, how long does it run, and what voids it? A good answer gives a number of years and says the exclusions out loud without being chased.
- Are you going over the existing skip sheathing or replacing decking, and what goes between the courses? A good answer describes the interlayment and the ventilation plan for this specific roof.
- What fasteners are specified, and who absorbs the cost if material shows up damaged or off grade? A good answer says stainless steel and names who eats it.
Some of the spread really is the market rather than the crew. In January 2026, the National Roofing Contractors Association reported that construction material prices had climbed 3.4 percent year over year through November 2025, with aluminum mill shapes and other nonferrous metals running more than 25 percent higher. Those metal figures had me off on a tangent about standing seam and why a metal quote in the same neighborhood moves for completely different reasons. Back to cedar. Flashing, drip edge, valley metal and fasteners are all metal on a wood roof too, so a bid drafted last autumn and a bid drafted this month are not working off the same cost sheet.
Split the warranty in two, get the scope in writing, and the three numbers stop being three guesses at one job. They turn into three different jobs, and the choice among the roofing companies Bellevue WA homeowners are weighing becomes defensible instead of a coin flip. Take the bid whose craftsmanship coverage says the most out loud and whose scope survives a second reading. That is rarely the cheapest envelope on the kitchen table, and it is not automatically the most expensive one either.
